site.btaDudestii Vechi Hosts Forum on Lyubomir Miletich

A forum, dedicated to Bulgarian linguist and ethnographer Lyubomir Miletich took place in Dudestii Vechi. The audience of Banat Bulgarians got acquainted with the life and work of thi Bulgarian intellectual of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century. 

The Bulgarian linguist, who later presided over the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, visited Banat twice to study the language of Banat Bulgarians. In 1896 he visited Vinga and Bisnov and in 1898 he went to Vinga. He described his studies in a paper called “The Literature and Language of Banat Bulgarians”. This work is the main reference about the birth and establishment of the Banat Bulgarian literature in the middle of the 19th c.  

In his works Miletich wrote that the intolerance of the Ottoman rule and the shared Roman Catholic faith drove refugees from Chiprovtsi and Central North Bulgaria in 1726-1730 to the outskirts of Crajova and in the autumn of 1737 they began their dramatic journey to the birth of the ethno-religious community of the Banat Bulgarians, named after the Banat district, where the refugees found shelter after decades of wandering in strange lands.  

„Lyubomir Miletich is the first Bulgarian who wrote about us. He is a central figure to the Bulgarian science but also to Banat Bulgarians. While he was here, he found Historia Domnus – the history of the diocese which starts with a story about Bulgaria. From it you can learn a lot about our migration from Chiprovtsi to Bisnov and Vinga. Today we are gathered in the place where he stayed in the past”, said during the forum Georgi Nakov, one of the organizers of the event, and an MP, honorary consul in Timisoara and representative of the Union of Banat Bulgarians.